The quirks of Coesoig...
I am not sure I could say these are the idiosyncrasies of all Irish Wolfhounds, in many ways I would hope so.
At rest...
Not much here really. His head must be in your lap when you are on the sofa. He just lies there saying, "I love you." When he dreams he puffs out his lips with his breath.
Eating...
He likes people to be around, he feels like he is missing something if you are not, and food is not that important. He will not eat if he has to go to the bathroom; he just stands saying, "Um, not yet."
This all changed when we started BARF. Now he loves to eat; he relishes lying down and tearing up the turkey, pork, chicken and beef bones. It is his own little project. He is slowly but surely starting to put on weight. Right now he is simply lean, as opposed to the previous emaciation.
Playing...
This encompasses most everything else about him. Coesoig is a talker. He barks when he plays (constantly), when he wants a dog to play with him, when he wants someone to come over a pet him, when he wants to act goofy... he does not bark in his sleep though. He and Andromeda love to battle each other and stampede around; it is quite brutal and stay out of the way. Coesoig's outer coat has been stripped from his neck by Andromeda biting him there. But he retaliates by knawing on her back legs, or his rear end sneak attack or the patented monster puppy head stomp. This move is the ultimate take down manuever. Basically he uses his overly long front legs to pummel his opponents. It may be coupled with a leap when used on Andromeda, but is a simple devastating hack on smaller dogs. He uses it on us when he is in his silly mood, but he tames it down quite a bit. He will put his paw on another dogs back as a greeting, a sort of lead-in to the stomp. His favorite thing I would say is running through sand around creeks coupled with chasing Andromeda around through the woods.
When he turned a year old, he magically started running like a real Wolfhound. Needless to say, we were elated.
Another thing we noticed is that he plays with anything living with as much fervor as another dog. It is quite amusing to watch him dance around with an ant or try to catch lightning bugs. He likes to course birds at the park (I think they are playing too). He once stalked a water snake in the lake - another joy to witness.
In the water...
He loves to play in lakes and creeks. He goes up to his neck, but he has not swam yet. But maybe soon there will be synchronized swimming with a Wolfhound and a Dane. For now he likes to take sticks from the retreivers and Andromeda as they swim back.
Coesoig was totally untrained when we got him at eight months.
He was house-trained, and knew -sit- and -down- the first week.
He has since learned -shake,- -wave,- and -stay- all in about five minutes each. -Heeling- appears to be natural. -Come- works unless he has to do a greeting (though the clicker as alleviated this). He now also knows -bark- and -stand.- His nonchalance, though, makes him seem a little dumb. But he really just does not care about much. Though as I said earlier, if it is really called for he will lay the stomp down.
Kelley and I decided in November of 1998 that we would like to look into rescuing a Wolfhound because we knew we could not afford the initial purchase price of a good pup and we did not want to support bad breeding programs. So we contacted the rescue in Kansas City, Mo. which is run by Bev and Sue Stobart. I sent in our application fully expecting not to hear from them for a year or so because there was a waiting list. One day in January Kelley and I were talking about what if they called us with a dog. We decided we would not be able to take one at that moment unless it was simply the perfect dog. They called the next day with the perfect dog: Coesoig (Gabriel at the time). They liked my application so much (written expression is a forte) and because we had Andromeda, they moved us to the top of the list. They did a couple phone interviews and a local contact owner who volunteers at the local shelter came and interviewed us and checked out the premises. Within a week we had Coesoig. We had to sign a contract stating we would not give him away except to the shelter, that we would keep him inside, etc. There was no mandatory adoption fee. and to top it off they told us the IWCA would reimburse us for his neutering and possibly up to $100 in total health costs if the neutering were cheaper. His initial bills came up to $175. And guess what: they reimbursed us in full! It truly is a wonderful program and because of this the satisfaction of rescuing is even greater. Use this story, please, to gauge your experiences or to encourage others in rescue.
